Blood from a Stone
by Irene A
Summary: FFVI. While Celes sleeps, Locke wanders the world of ruin, saving damsels in their towers and all of that.


_Les miracles ne se servent pas à convertir, mais à condamner__._ – Pascal

It was speckled and dirty when Locke rode into town. The sun was high up as the roof of a cathedral, the sky around it all done up in violet, a mess of envious streaks cross an eggshell type of world. He breathed in, heavy enough to hear himself, his knees guiding the chocobo towards the inn. Wearily, Locke dismounted and tied the reigns to a wooden post. He coughed once before knocking, before following his boots through the door.

The inn there was small, just two creaky tables and a couple of rough woolen cots upstairs. Locke paid the innkeep double what he was supposed to. There was a flash of a smile, like the wink of a dagger: Locke always did do his best to seem familiar.

"How's the weather been, around here?"

"Ah, y'know," said the innkeep, straightening the folds of his apron. "Hot as the hells, 'cept for when the Light comes from the north."

"Yeah, well." Locke tilted his head a bit, interested. "That sure is something."

"Uh huh. Somethin' it is."

"Get a lot of folks coming through here?" There wasn't anyone but him in the hotel lobby, but another guest was snoring soundly upstairs.

The innkeeper's voice was plenty warm. "Just enough, I'd say. Lots of people like yourself, who lost their homes in the great Calamity, taken to wanderin."

"Oh, I didn't lose my home in the Calamity," Locke said. "Lost it a long time before then."

"Sorry to hear that, sir." The innkeep makes a solemn face, tracing an old warding sign with his fingers.

Locke waved his hands around, shook his head. "I didn't mean it like that."

"Just the same, sir. Just the same."

Locke had a few sips of muggy colored ale before he made his way upstairs, the ill-mannered groans of wood underfoot following him close behind. He ran his fingers through the washbasin, making the water run opaque with grime. Over and over, Locke put the pebbled cloth to his hands, but some of the dirt was so deep in his knuckles it seemed like it wouldn't come out.

* * *

Next morning, the sun rose same as ever, scratching at his skin like sandpaper. Locke decided to take a walk around the town, as lonely as it seemed. How strange the world was, without birds to sing in it, without the quiet tug of insects running curly-cues through the air. Outside, a group of men were playing cards in the shade of a splendorous old ruin, and a little girl chased a hoop through the streets.

Just as Locke was passing by, one of the men grabbed the girl's toy. "I'm confiscating this, y'hear?" He was a grand grey dome of a person, with tiny stalks of hair peaking out the top of his head. Locke didn't like him very much.

"Quit it, Baker!" said the girl. "I wasn't doing anything to bother you."

Locke stepped in, sure as summer. "Give her back her hoop," he said.

"Oh-ho-_ho_!" Baker laughed. "And you're gonna make me?"

Locke shrugged for a moment and bowed, fingertips just barely scraping the ground. Scratch, scratch, scratch. "Dunno," he smiled. "Up to her."

"We-e-ell. You're new in town, I know, so I'm seein' you're a bit confused."

One of the other men threw an echo into the air. "A bit confused, like. Not right in the head." The third was short and dour, mute as a stone.

"We're the ones making the decisions round here. Keep things in check, y'see?" There's a bit of magic growing in Baker's palm; it lent him a strange color. "C'mon," he said. "Look real hard."

The girl took Locke by the hand. "Let's go. They aren't worth your time."

"If you say so," said Locke. He turned with her, his hand raised somewhere between a wave and a salute. "Charmed," he called out over his shoulder.

* * *

"I can't believe it," the girl was saying. "No one ever stands up to Baker and his guys. They got hold of some funny crystals that used to belong to the Emperor or something and set themselves up as a kind of law force."

"Uh-huh."

"My brother says there used to be an Imperial warehouse 'round here. Guess it must be true." She hopped a little as she walked, so it was almost like she was skipping. "My name's Bethany. What's yours?"

"Locke. My name's Locke." They shared an exaggerated handshake.

"What is it that you do, Locke?"

"I'm a treasure hunter."

"Really? That sounds awful romantic." She paused for a moment to put a thoughtful look on her face. "When I grow up I wanna be a highwayman. I shall live in a tent and ride a chocobo, and there'll be ribbons in my hair."

"I always did want more ribbons," said Locke, showing the white of his teeth.

"Locke? Would you have really fought Baker and his men on account of me?"

"'Till the last drop of blood fell from my veins." He smiled, quick as you please, bright as the ring of a bell. "But it wouldn't have come to that. I'm quite good, you know."

Bethany nodded. "I'm sure of it."

* * *

That night she invited him to dine with her family; they ate dry, crusty bread and a dull and flavorless stew. There were few vegetables left to color their cooking, but everyone was used to that by now.

"So, Locke," said her brother while he reached for the wine. "My sister says you're a treasure hunter."

"Correct. A lucrative trade, these days. It hasn't suffered a bit."

"That's not just a fancy term for thief, is it?"

"'Course not. I'm a man of honor." Locke paused to take a drink. "Besides, what's left in this place to steal?"

"Quite right, quite right," the man continued, squinting a bit in the candlelight. "World's not been the same since those Returner mucky-mucks decided to put their damned business into action."

"Hold a minute— the Returners were trying to put things right. The Empire was torching villages just to see how bright they'd burn."

"I'm no great supporter of Gesthal, but at least while he was king the sky was the right color." He picked up a chunk of meat with his fork and shook it. "People suffer, and that's the way of it, but when you try to stir up the general order of things, it's liable to explode in your face. All the Returners did was get the Empire riled up, and now we've got General Kefka in his tower and we're the ones paying for it."

"I just-" Locke grimaces, as though he's swallowed something too far to the left. "I don't see how helping people can ever be wrong."

"Maybe so, maybe so. I'm glad you stepped in for my sister, at any rate. Baker and his boys—they're playing around with witchery, and I don't like it one bit."

They spoke for a little while longer, hands on top of dead wood, dead things in on their plates, crowded with shadows from the lamplight. Alven Cotter was a merchant of wool and salt; he tried to sell Locke some things after dinner.

* * *

He found Bethany in the rotted fields outside, underneath the clean bleak yawn of sky.

"Hello-o-o," Locke called. "I was wonderin' where I'd find you."

"Well, I'm right here," she replied.

"Look," he said, widening his stance, "I'm sorry about your hoop."

"No, don't-"

"Ah, ah, ah." Locke waved a finger, left right left right. "I was saying I was sorry you lost your hoop, but I got something else for you that'll hopefully make up for it." He pulled out something glittering, silver, holds it up to the moonlight so she can see.

Bethany gasped. "But that's, that's Baker's knife! How did you-"

"He's not exactly the brightest ruby in the dungeon. Besides, I figure he took something of yours, it's only fair you have something of his."

"I'll say." She put her hand on the hilt, unsure of how to hold it. "This is the best thing anyone ever gave me."

"I'm glad."

In the stories knights would give their ladies weapons to pledge their loyalty, but Locke has already sworn every oath. The world was on its knees and Locke couldn't even protect the dirt beneath his feet. But that would change, soon enough. Rachel was still there, still patient, and fire still struggled within him.

The knife he gave Bethany had no inscription; nothing was written there.

As a kind of thank you Locke helped Mrs. Cotter with the dishes—there was a great black pot that he scrubbed down to bare, till his hands were white and wrinkled.

"Trouble with that one," offered his hostess, "is that it's so damn old, sometimes it's hard to tell whether you're cleaning it, or just moving the dirt around."

Locke was cleaning it. He had the bruises next morning to prove it.

* * *

Two afternoons later, Locke sat alone in his tiny room, pouring over maps and putting fingers to parchment. The innkeeper knocked once on the outside wall and poked his whiskered head through the door.

"There's someone outside asking for you, sir. I'd've brought them up, but I respect a customer's privacy."

"That's alright," Locke said, looking up from the bed. He held up his hands and opened his palms. "I've got nothing to hide."

* * *

On top of the inn's splintered wooden steps stood Alven Cotter and his melancholy wife.

"Sorry to bother you," he said. "But Bethany-"

His wife broke into worry beside him. "Oh Goddess, she's been taken! Baker and his men came, they spoke some nonsense about a knife or something she stole. But Bethany's not like that. She's a good, honest girl."

"Where?" asked Locke, as he laced some straps up his arms. "Where did they take her?"

"Their hidedout's to the north east, in an old Imperial warehouse," he replied. "But you can't be thinking of going there alone."

Locke grinned. "That's why you came to me, isn't it?"

There was something iron in Locke's smile that Cotter couldn't put his finger on; it didn't stop stinging until after he disappeared into the dust.

* * *

There was red on his hands from the sun and the sand, white stripes on his fingers from sticking them in keyholes. He kept a set of tiny silver picks on him all the time; you never knew what kind of doors a man might have to open. The warehouse was not particularly well defended, and it was easy enough for Locke to get around. But he found Baker before he found Bethany.

Locke had seen the world crumble from two feet away, felt the earth die while pressed deep to his hands. There wasn't a speck of danger he was afraid of. The thin one was the first to fall: Locke swept down and took him in the knees. The silent one comes next, and his lips didn't make a sound when he struck him on the back of the head. Later, Locke learned that a creature some ways in the wild had taken his voice. In such a small town, there was no place to get the herbs to fix it.

Baker himself was of course the last of all. He had a mean twist of a smile on his face, speaking an incantation. Across the old marble room, Locke could feel his hair stand on end.

"Well, you did come," said Baker, the thread of his voice humming something electric. "I wasn't sure you would."

"You don't know me that well, do you?" Locke took the hilt of his dagger, tossed it up, caught it. "Where's the girl?"

"Why should I tell you? Ain't nothing in it for me but the look on your face."

"I _am_ quite handsome, thanks for noticing," Locke replied. The knife didn't waver in his hands.

"Fine. You want to know what happened? I killed her. Left me no choice. She struck at me, y'see, and I'm a man of honor."

Locke wasn't aware of what happened next, only that he was charging forward and the whole room around him ran with varied shades of white: Baker's magic pulling at his skin. Baker didn't know what he was doing with the spell, not from the inside. It wasn't very hard for Locke to dodge.

For a minute Locke thought that he'd open Baker's stomach, but he stopped himself. Instead he flipped the knife around, so that his hand gripped the blade. He jabbed the hilt into Baker's stomach, knocking the wind out of him.

"If you can't speak, you can't cast," Locke said. "Funny how that works."

He stood over him for just a second before kicking Baker in the chin. The heel of Locke's boot had kissed the top of the world, but the shadows around him then didn't care.

* * *

Bethany was waiting in the room ten feet ahead, spread white as a daisy across the wide slate of the floor. She wasn't breathing, but her corpse was still warm. The blood around her neck hadn't yet dried. In the odd indoor light, it almost looked like a necklace, like some treasured heirloom. It reminded him of Rachel. How perfect she looked in her quiet room, surrounded by roses whose red never died.

The truth was Locke had more magic bottled up in his littlest rib-bone than Baker did in his whole grey body. The truth was he had prayed with those strange sunlight stones till he could hear their voices ringing in his ears, so that the magic never really left him. He grabbed Bethany and started the strongest poetry he knew, or didn't: the words came from some place not his own, touching everywhere around with gold, gilding the lily of everything.

Bethany breathed in.

* * *

They were only a little ways out of town when she woke, draped awkwardly across a saddle. The blood on her neck had crusted over, and Locke had tied his bandana around one of the cuts in her arm.

"So you're awake then, eh?" said Locke. "It's good to have you back."

"What- what happened? Whatever did you _do_? I remember dying, and..." She let the words trail off. "I remember _dying._"

"Well, you're not dead now, and I think that's what matters."

"So you _did__, _with the magic. And I wasn't dreaming."

"Bethany," said Locke after some considering. "Before the Calamity, I was with the Returners. Head of Intelligence, actually. I was with Kefka that day on the floating continent. I saw- well, it doesn't matter what I saw."

"But you're just like Baker then," she said slowly, patching things together. "Baker and his witchery."

"No! Not at all. I know what I'm doing," Locke said. "I know what it is I'm touching when I hold the stones." He turned his head away from her and scratched at his nose. "Besides, and I'm not saying you should be grateful, but I saved your life. And that's got to mean something."

"You don't understand," said Bethany, hair sticking to the dampness of her face. "I can't go back. I remember what they did to me, and I can't go back. There, there's- it was just a stupid hoop, and now I can't go back."

* * *

They carried on in silence until they reached the town's edge. Despite her protest, Bethany's feet made it into town easily enough. Before leaving, she gave him back Baker's knife. "I think this belongs to you," she said. "At least in the loose sense of the word."

"Bethany, I'm sorry. If I'd've known-"

She looked at him full-on then, from the wide grey of her eyes to the gap in her teeth. "Thanks, Locke."

Somewhere in Baker's hideout he had found a dense old map, riddled with scarlet promises of rebirth. It tracked out a map to a cluster of mountains in the shape of a star. Locke thought he would go there next. The sand in the air stung the cuts on his fingers; the wind covered up his footsteps before long.

Bethany left his bandana lying lonely in the dirt, waiting quietly for some bird to pick it up.


End file.
